


Steel Magnolias

by Bleed_Peroxide



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, BananaValentine2019, F/F, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 16:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17791190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bleed_Peroxide/pseuds/Bleed_Peroxide
Summary: Etymology* Combining the contrasting images of steel, a hard metal, and magnolia, a flower.Nounsteel magnolia(pluralsteel magnolias)1.(chiefly Southern US)A woman who exemplifies both traditional femininity and an uncommon fortitude.[Completed as part of the #BananaValentine2019 gift exchange on Twitter.]





	Steel Magnolias

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pirateandelf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirateandelf/gifts).



> The prompts were fem!Ash and fem!Eiji cuddling. I'll be honest, I've never written any kind of Rule 63 fic before, but in the nature of the gift exchange, it was an interesting challenge to complete. I didn't change their names "officially" (it's implied that "Ash" is Ashley, but you can substitute that with anything else if you want), but rather tweaked the nuances of what their names - chosen or given - have. 
> 
> Written for [PirateAndElf](https://twitter.com/pirateandelf) on Twitter.

"Ash! Get up already! You said ‘five more minutes’ a half hour ago!”         

Eiji’s only response was a muffled sound of disagreement, and the soft rustle of sheets as their occupant cocooned herself deeper within.  

With an irritable huff, Eiji marched over and gave a light smack where she guessed Ash’s shoulder might be and repeated, “Get. _Up_! The class is in an hour!”  

Eiji was rewarded for her efforts with a pair of jade eyes peering over the blanket, fixing her with a scowl that could have curdled milk.  

“I’ll remind you at this point that you paid for it, Ash. It was  _your_ idea - or does this date really mean so little to you?”  

This had precisely the desired effect Eiji was looking for - Ash blinked owlishly before rubbing the remnants of sleep from her eyes. Satisfied, Eiji strode over to the dresser to pick out an outfit for their excursion into the city. 

Tapping a finger to her chin, Eiji’s gaze flickered through the various hangers as she weighed her options carefully. She considered if she should blend in with the other women in the city, who favored understated elegance through earth tones and knee-high boots. When she could actually be bothered to wear more than tattered jeans and red sneakers, Ash herself favored soft white and beige, as though emulating invocations of the divine that her appearance inspired.  

Not that she particularly cared for such comparisons.  

“Angel, my ass,” she had snorted with derision, wiping traces of gunpowder from her cheek. Eiji had learned to avoid such statements in the future.  

There was also the attire Eiji had brought from home, which leaned closer to “adorable” and made her feel a bit at ease in a foreign place. Ash seemed particularly enchanted with some of the more whimsical pieces she wore, earning her a few more full-bodied hugs and variations of the word “cute” sprinkled into whatever mindless praise Ash peppered her with.  

Eiji wanted to say that she didn’t care so much what others thought of her. She truly did. But the snide comments that she heard whispered under people’s breath when they thought she couldn’t hear…. they were all tiny pinpricks, each gathering until it was like her pride rested upon a bed of nails.  

_Burden._  

_Weakling._  

_What’s the boss doing with someone like that?_  

_Eiji makes the boss weak. She’d be better off just ditching her for someone…_  

Better? Stronger? She’d heard it all before. Her own namesake was enough indication that she’d been found wanting - parents desperately wishing for a boy, hoping that a condemning a girl to a lifetime of sheepish explanations could compensate for it. While Ash threatened to slaughter anyone that used her full name - Bones had tried it once, and earned a punch in the mouth for his boldness - at least it wasn’t a blatant refusal of who she was.  

Even Ash had picked up on this early on - the way Eiji had cringed when asked the meaning of her own name, or how much Eiji cherished Ibe’s feminine honorifics. As was her way, Ash enjoyed teasing her with it, lips wide with a playful smirk. Though it sounded peculiar with her American accent, Eiji understood it for the olive branch it was -  _see, I sound even more ridiculous in your language._  

She thought back on a conversation she’d had with Ash over dinner a few weeks ago, sharing _mapo_ tofu and anecdotes with a domesticity Eiji could scarcely believe possible for people like them.  

Ash had blown on her own cube of tofu carefully, as though it would lessen the heat of the spices imbued into the dish itself. The way her lips pursed as she did so was too endearing for Eiji to bring attention to the fruitlessness of the gesture.  

“The guys really got under your skin, hmm? I know you don’t like ‘em bringing it up, but at the end of the day, they’re still guys and have a lot of old-fashioned ideas,” she stated, popping the cube into her mouth and chewing it thoughtfully before continuing.  

“Do you have any idea how long it took me to earn some fucking respect? You gotta be twice as good to be seen as an equal, and better than that to actually be respected a leader. Anything less, and you’re just another Bond Girl.”  

Another piece of tofu - blow, chew, ponder.  

“I guess part of the blame falls with me. I haven’t exactly done a good job of treating you any less like a damsel. They recognize you as…. well, ‘the boss’s girl’ and default to treating you as such. It looks a lot like baseless sexism if you’re not used to the way this world works.”  

Eiji had rolled her eyes and replied with a huff, “They treat me like their little Japanese housewife.”  

“I mean… you _do_ cook for them.”  

“Shut up!”  

Ash had only laughed at Eiji’s tart response - it was that rare, gentle laugh that made it easy to understand why people compared her to an angel.  

Perhaps it was due to the inexplicable warmth bubbling through her veins or the way her heart had skipped a beat in her chest at such a sight. Perhaps it was simply addressing the unnamed tension that Eiji felt every time they had a stolen moment in private…. but Eiji felt bold enough to address the peculiar turn of phrase in Ash’s words before.  

“Am I, though?”  

Ash had furrowed her brow, not understanding. Eiji’s cheeks flushed pink, suddenly unsure if she had misjudged.  

“You’d… called me ‘the boss’s girl and I just…”  

Eiji had found herself unable to meet Ash’s eyes at that point, fixing her gaze on her knees. It had been all she could to hold her skirt in an iron grip, waiting for Ash to kindly yet firmly reaffirm dissipate her delusions.  

_The boss’s girl_ …. there was a such a possessive tint to it. Eiji almost wanted to rail against its implications as soon as the full meaning hit her, and yet... 

Eiji was reminded of the way Ash had shielded her from various assailants in Dino’s mansion, the way she’d entrusted her closest lieutenants to keep Eiji safe while Ash razed the building to the ground.  

Eiji remembered the flutter of something nameless in her chest when she began to notice small details about Ash - how even her eyelashes were blonde, or the way she tended to braid the side of her hair when she was thinking, as though needing something to do with her hands. She though on how many times she was caught breathless whenever Ash smiled freely, how desperately she wished she could capture its essence in a bottle.  

It was so obvious. Ash had already stolen her heart and possessed well before now. 

_I’m an idiot, I’m so stupid, what were you thinking, of course she’s not -_  

When the silence between them grew, Eiji risked a glance up at Ash through her bangs. To her surprise, the blonde had simply gazed at Eiji with an expression she couldn’t quite read. She seemed to be measuring Eiji in some way; one could almost see the way her mind worked like an abacus.  

After a painful stretch of nothing, Ash’s lips had relaxed into a smile. It looked almost self-deprecating, as though caught red-handed.  

“Yeah…. I’d say that you are.”  

She was the boss’s girl - the opinions of other people, of other _men_ at that, didn’t matter. Ash loved seeing her dolled up and cute…. what did she care if others thought it made her look too girly, too delicate?  

What the hell was so wrong about looking feminine?  

Eiji smiled to herself at the recollection. 

_I_ am _the boss's girl. I can look however I want._

She picked out a cream sweater with black stitching of a cartoonish cat’s face, pairing it with matching stockings and loafers. To add the cherry to the cake, Eiji dug into a wicker basket tucked at the bottom and fished out a lacy bow to fix into her hair.  

_Might as well go for the full effect._ She pulled out two hair ties, securing her hair in twin ponytails near the crown of her head - she tilted her head to the side, striking a pose like one of the idols back home.  

“Don’t you look cute,” a voice drawled from behind hair, a pair of arms wrapping themselves around her waist.  

“Well, of course - we’re going on a date, after all!” Eiji explained, clasping her hands together in front of her. “I can’t help but be excited - especially since _you_ picked it. I mean… chocolate-making? Bringing them home afterward? It sounds perfect.”  

Ash said nothing, shuffling uncomfortably behind Eiji in a way that reminded her of a child that had broken an expensive vase.  

“About that….”  

Taking her phone from her pocket, Ash scrolled through it with the pad of her finger before showing it to Eiji wordlessly.  

“They canceled it….?”Eiji asked, feeling her heart sink into her chest.  

She pulled at the edge of her sweater, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish. She’d spent all that time for nothing - what had she been trying to do, really? It wasn’t about looking feminine, exactly - it was about looking the way she thought Ash might like. Already, she felt herself extinguishing half-formed daydreams that maybe Ash might look at her like the lead out of a romantic film, just as besotted with her as Eiji felt, just as fascinating and- 

Eiji felt a pair of lips brush against her cheek.  

“I might have gotten a bit greedy and…. grabbed some on the way home a week ago,” Ash admitted sheepishly. “To test for poison, y’know.”  

“Uh-huh.”  

“Okay, alright. I was worried, and we needed a back-up plan in case we ended up fucking them up. I can’t cook worth shit, and neither of us has a clue how to make chocolate.”  

“Says you. In Japan, it is traditional for women to chocolates for girls on Valentine’s Day, and for men to return the favor a month later, on White Day. I have made chocolate many times.”  

Ash stepped around from behind Eiji, a mischievous grin on her lips.  

“Oh, cheer up. We get to have chocolate without having to lift a finger, and I get to see you in this adorable outfit. I say we eat a fuckton of chocolate on the couch and watch terrible romance movies. That’s a lot better than making chocolate with a bunch of strangers, don’cha think?”  

_She called me adorable…_  

Still floating on the high of that simple compliment, Eiji couldn’t find it within herself to complain.  

They found themselves curled on the couch hours later, tucked beneath a thick woolen blanket. However, Eiji felt almost too warm, acutely aware of the way Ash’s chest pressed against her arm or the fragrance of her perfume, dark and lush, reminding Eiji of wine and moonlight. They spent hours watching dramatic love stories with maidens in bonnets, married women sipping sweet tea in the balmy summer, or men chasing after their lovers in the rain. Eiji couldn’t have explained to anyone what the plots were, what with Ash quoting them with such a terrible British accent that Eiji was soon clutching at her sides with laughter.  

Ash favored quoting male leads, clasping Eiji's hands as she recited back the dialogue - at times, it was hard to tell how much she was reciting by memory, and how much was sincere. It was at these times that Eiji had to look away, muttering under her breath about Ash being a terrible actress.  

Eventually, though, Ash’s banter slowly died down, and it seemed she had fallen into a thoughtful silence. Her eyes hadn’t darkened the way it did when she had lapsed into a traumatic memory or a bleak demeanor, but rather was the same contemplative expression Eiji had seen countless times as they’d ventured to the library, pouring over a heavy book as she pushed reading glasses up her nose.  

It was during a rather poignant scene during one of the films - a group of women reminiscing at a funeral with Eiji was dabbing at her own eyes, that she finally spoke up.  

“Y’know, I think that you’d fit the bill for one of those,” Ash mused, eyes fixed on the screen. Eiji wasn’t sure if it was actually directed towards her, or Ash thinking out loud.  

“One of those what? A ‘steel magnolia’? I admit I do not understand what that means. A flower made from steel?”  

A soft sound of amusement escaped Ash, far too fond to make Eiji feel insulted.  

“It’s a Southern term used towards certain kinds of women. It’s almost a paradox. They’re strong, resilient, they endure like steel. But they remain beautiful, feminine, soft where they need to be. They are flowers made of something unbreakable.”  

Eiji wrung her hands together, the remark bringing back a conversation she’d had with herself hours before.  

“I wish I were more like steel. I feel like I’m weak, too soft. I don't fit in with the rest of you guys.”  

Ash shook her head, pulling Eiji closer to her. This close, Eiji could feel the soothing rhythm of her heartbeat, strong and resilient in her chest.  

“I don’t. You’re perfect just as you are.” 

**Author's Note:**

> What did Eiji plan to wear? [This](http://wheretoget.it/look/1895728) adorable get-up. Ash never stood a chance.


End file.
